Berlin Brandenburg Airport to Potsdamer Platz

Step out of the U-Bahn at Potsdamer Platz and the city rearranges itself around you: canted glass towers, the tented sweep of the Sony Center roof, cinema marquees, and in February the red-carpet churn of the Berlinale. This was no-man's-land within living memory; now it is Berlin's boardroom-and-box-office quarter, a short stroll from the green calm of the Tiergarten. If you are arriving at BER with a meeting to make or a screening to catch, the good news is that this is one of the easiest addresses in the city to reach — roughly 21 km of track and tarmac separate the terminal from the plaza, and the fast option is genuinely fast.

The FEX makes this the quickest run in Berlin

Here is the headline, and I do not say it lightly: Potsdamer Platz is the quickest central destination from BER of them all. The FEX Airport Express — run by DB Regio for the VBB transport authority — barrels in direct in just 19 minutes, threading through Südkreuz at roughly the 15-minute mark before setting you down right in the middle of the quarter. One flat €5.00 ABC ticket covers the whole journey, which by the standards of European airport links is close to a rounding error.

Trains leave every 15 minutes across a generous window — 04:00 to 01:00 — so whether you have landed on a dawn shuttle or a delayed evening hop, there is almost always a departure within a quarter of an hour. You catch it at the station directly beneath Terminal 1, which means no shuttle bus, no shivering on an outdoor platform: escalator down, tap on, done. For anyone travelling light with a laptop bag and a schedule to keep, nothing else on this list comes close.

The S9: cheaper on the nerves, slower on the clock

The FEX is not the only rail option, though it is comfortably the best. The S9 S-Bahn, with a change onto another S-Bahn line, will also get you to Potsdamer Platz for the very same €5.00 ABC fare — but it takes around 45 minutes, more than double the FEX, and runs every 20 minutes rather than every 15. It is an all-stops crawl through the city's southern and eastern reaches.

So why would you take it? Honestly, mostly by accident — if you drift onto the first train on the platform without checking the board, or if a FEX has just pulled out and you would rather keep moving than wait. It is a perfectly civilised ride and you will see more of the city through the window. But treat it as the fallback, not the plan. When the fast train and the slow train cost precisely the same, there is no romance in choosing the slow one on a working day.

Taxis and pre-booked cars for the door-to-door crowd

Rail is brilliant until you are hauling a film crew's worth of cases or juggling a client who does not do stairs. That is when the road comes into its own. A licensed Berlin taxi from the official rank outside Terminal 1 arrivals runs on the meter and typically lands in the €58–72 range for the roughly 40-minute drive, plus the standard €1.50 BER surcharge. It is available 24/7 on demand, so there is no booking and no waiting for an app to find a car — you simply join the rank and go.

If you would rather know the number before you fly, a private transfer through the likes of Welcome Pickups or Blacklane fixes the price upfront — expect somewhere around €55–78 — and sends a driver to take your cases inside arrivals and lead you out to the car. It is pre-booked, it is available around the clock, and it is a firm favourite with business travellers who value a car that is already waiting and a fare that will not creep. For a solo trip it is an indulgence over the FEX; for a small group arriving together, split four ways it starts to look downright sensible.

How to actually choose

My rule of thumb, sharpened by too many February mornings racing to press screenings: if you can carry your own bags, take the FEX and enjoy being in a Sony Center café before your slower-travelling colleagues have cleared the S-Bahn. If you are loaded down, arriving at an antisocial hour, or moving as a group, book a private car or grab a taxi at the rank and let someone else navigate the ring road. The S9 is there if the timing throws you a curveball, but on a city that runs this smoothly, you rarely need it. Whichever you pick, you are minutes from the towers, the cinemas and the Tiergarten — a very Berlin combination of glass, film and greenery.